Image Shack is a piece of garbage, they are old school and outdated. Register with Photobucket they are the best and they have free accounts and paid. The free is great its probably all you need. Photobucket's server is very fast and the images load in seconds. Image Shack on the other-hand is slow.

I'm "concerned" about using PhotoBucket because on other forums, I see a LOT of image placeholders that say the image is no longer available, or something like that. I was thinking that the whole website was gone, like many Lycos systems, or maybe it's a user issue? Some photo hosting systems just seem to come-and-go, so you should to do a little research.

Do those services usually have requirements? For example, Hotmail requires you to log-in at least every 30 days. But that's no problem- you should check your email hosts regularly, but I could see how you'd upload a bunch of photos about "cousin Eddie's wedding" and forget about them.

Yeah well imageshack used to be ok before they required you to register and have to pay for animated gif or transparent png,Now i believe they are making people download a video uploader tool just to upload videos , so they really stink now and would never recommended them anymore.

It's not hard to get an account and is free, But it's a pain and they still do not allow animated gif or transparent png with out paying

Another one i would stay away from is tiny pic, when they clean their data/delete your images. they delete all images that was ever uploaded by your ip.. so if you have websites and all your images are uploaded to tiny pic, then the whole site would be hit, and they just do this when they clear data.. so say no to tinypic as well.

Photobucket is great, just be sure you never upload anything that would break TOS and your images will be there forever, or at least while photobucket is around, and they do no seem to be going anywhere.

If you are using your images for for your forums appearances, Then i say use servimg, even if they did go down forumotion has back up and will bring them back. servimg is forumotions image host for forumotion founders, So that would be best to use for your forumotion sites.

Other then that if you are just uploading everyday pics' i would say use something like imagevenue, imagebam or other free image host you can upload multi thumbs at once.

However,when using free image host such as imagebam or imagevenue etc..Be sure you always select family safe content option, many of these free host allow adult content if you mark it as adult.If you do that they will have adult ad's on the page of the image. SO YOU DO NOT WANT THIS EVER!!!!! YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FORUM FOR JUST ALLOWING ANYTHING THAT LEADS TO ADULT AD'S/CONTENT

So yeah, be sure to never select that option, always make sure the content is selected as family safe and your fine And be sure to let you members know along with enforcing,warnings etc.... if they did select the wrong option.

Whatever the case, there are zillions of free image host out there, Find one that works best for you and stick to that, But if they are images for your forums and websites, be sure to always keep all images as back-up and to use servimg or photobucket, or even your own server if you have one

I'm "concerned" about using PhotoBucket because on other forums, I see a LOT of image placeholders that say the image is no longer available, or something like that

well thats because either the account owner has deleted the images,thire account or photobucket removed or banned the account due to violations of TOS.If you follow the TOS and dont delete your images, they will stick.I still have images from like 6 years ago on one of my photobucket accounts.. so they do stick.

Yeah there are a lot of image hosting sites out there but the one I definitely recommend is Photobucket. The missing images you see from Photobucket means that the photo has either been deleted or moved, or that the account has exceeded its bandwidth.

Photobucket is extremely reliable and it's also very user friendly. At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

Forumotion has a Servimg.com "host a image" button on the forums text editor which I would like to have changed to Photobucket but that can't be done I already inquired about that.

All the Servimg.com button does is make it convenient for members to host an image while they are in the process of making a post, but quite frankly most people already have an image in mind they want to post before they are in the process of actually making the post and usually have the image url already copied.

The Admin can upload images for the forum design using the same method with Servimg.com, but that is of no use for the members. It is not any more difficult to host your images someplace else other than Servimg.com.

I moved all my images years ago that make up my forum to photobucket and I do mean ALL of them, backgrounds for tables, headers, buttons,,etc, because Servimg.com was so slow in loading it was affecting the load time of the forum. In some cases the images would not load at all because Servimg.com server was having problems. Often times they were down.

When I changed all my images that make up the forum to photobucket within an hour people were commenting on how much faster the forum was loading.

No, Servimg.com is not advised by me and others that have commented in this topic.

forumotion has improved servimg big time within the last couple years, so it is no where as slow as it used to be,and is rare to see any images down anymore. Once again since it is forumotion host, even if the iamges did go down they woukld not be down long.

As far as speed, it really hase to do with ones computer and service as well.I have been on some pages with photobucket before on other computers and was way slow.. so your service and computer speed plays a big roll as well.

At the end of the day, you have to find what you like best and just stick with that

Oh and the forums default image uploader for members varies, some forumotion forums have imageshack as thire members default uploader to where others have servimg.. i never understood why that is?